HTC: We Can Still Challenge Samsung and Apple

HTC continues to sink in both sales and overall presence, which they seek to regain with the recently announced flagship HTC One. Sales for the February went down 44 percent from the previous year, and this marks the absolute worst level in three years. Market is merciless, but the company hopes it had hit the bottom and the only way further is upwards. According to Gartner analytics, global marketshare of the company went down to an alarming 2.2%, while others were on ascent ? including ZTE and Huawei. Whilst Samsung and Apple took an enormous bite of the high-end segment, aforementioned duo took a portion of the low-end segment.

In early January, HTC?s main figure Peter Chou stated that one of the major problems is marketing, and that they should follow the line presented by the successful competition. Not that long ago, LG, Samsung and HTC were tied, basically divided by a mere few percent of marketshare ? and only one victor emerged from that battle, which I?m sure you have already heard of ? Samsung.

South Korean company just presented its own flagship yesterday afternoon in quite a peculiar manner, which apparently made HTC?s President Jason Mackenzie laugh at first. Mackenzie was less prone to laughter in a recent interview with FierceWireless.

They reiterated the known fact how HTC ran into a buzzsaw of the Galaxy S III when it came to marketing presence. Mackenzie was more than aware of that issue in particular, stating that they will not stop marketing the new device again after another one pops out from competitors (Galaxy S IV being the case here). ?We’ll continue and really invest. We are going to invest more than we ever have as a company in terms of direct marketing. We’re going to be strategic on how we market,? he added.

Unfortunately for the Taiwanese manufacturer, Android is Galaxy and vice versa in the eyes of the consumer more often than not, but HTC hopes to become more recognizable as a quality brand. Mackenzie notes that the company wants to be synonymous with the best smartphones in the world. ?We’re different and unique from our competitors in the sense that what we do are smartphones. That’s who we are. We were a pioneer is establishing this whole category, one of the leaders. The idea around One is to have a simple brand name that denotes our flagship product offering and is simple, strong, but does not take away from the HTC brand.? He concluded his thoughts regarding recognizability by stating that they wish people talked about HTC in the same way they talk about Galaxy. It might take a while, but they seem to be there for the long run ? and they will exploit any opportunity presented. Even if that opportunity is a mere public laugh at the ?same old plasticky? Galaxy S IV.

HTC is definitely going in the right direction with its latest flagship HTC One, but only the time will tell if it is going to be the company?s saviour. Competition is fierce, having Samsung dominating the Android platform on one end and having Nokia dominating the Windows Phone platform on the other